Writing and translating are part of the same miracle that is language—that which made us human.
Writing Quotes
The page is led by Shakespeare, then William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, followed by Horace and Orwell. Three old sources are worth knowing: Bacon’s Meditationes Sacræ (1597) says reading makes a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man; Thoreau’s journal for 1838 says it is vain to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live; and Horace’s Ars Poetica is the source for the idea that the writer wins by mixing profit with pleasure.
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then for your friends, then for money” is credited to Virginia Woolf and flagged misattributed. The notes quote an anecdote from a Tyrol coffee-house in which someone else says something similar. Two more flagged lines are credited to Cicero and to Menander.
I have been writing for a very long time
I suddenly noticed that
I don't have a pen in my hand
I know too well what I am going to say. I know it too well before writing.
Writing brings about a catharsis of my own terror and pity. It is something I have to do.
Writing is prophesy.
Don’t write anything unless you want it to come true.
“My writing is living, it’s sort of a dance with the reader and together we unpack things.”
The concept of writing is so alien-- actual writing is so alien to most comedians.